On October 31st, Living Links researchers Dr. Nico Cladiere and Dr. Juan Carlos-Gomez welcomed Jon Ward from Acquity ETS Ltd to trial a Tobii infra-red eye tracking device with our primates. The tracker was trialled with our East group of capuchins, squirrel monkeys and the Budongo Trail chimpanzees.
The greatest success of proof of concept was with the capuchin Kato (a 7 year old periphery male from the East group). He came into the cubicles, sat in position and easily followed the calibration dot. After he successfully did this he was shown a variety of pictures of other capuchins in his group and some from the West. The photos were of females and males of varying ranks.
The video shows where he looked for each of the monkeys. The size of the red dot is indicative of the length of time Kato spent on that point on the screen, the red lines show the pattern of his gaze as it moves.
Both Juan and Nico were very impressed by this technology and its potential for countless benefits to the studies here in Living Links. Just from the quick trials we were able to see Kato's tendency to avoid staring at the eyes of the alpha males and the fact he looked directly at the eyes of the females from the neighbouring group. This type of data can enlighten us on the group dynamics, hierarchies and the ability of our monkeys to recognise individuals. The tool may also be useful in social learning studies as well as the evolutionary development of various cognitive processes.
6 ноя 2012
